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Published: February 25th 2009
feeling satisfied that yes, laura and i were not adequately informed archeological enthusiastes who would appreciate a pile of bricks for being more than just a pile of bricks, these two laypersons woke up with the sun and skipped out of town.
with moenjodaro at our backs we head out to the road in the hopes of finding some kind of ride. it quickly became apperant that we were a little early for the cycle rickshaws and getting a ride could take a while so we decide to hump it up to the next intersection a couple of kilometers up the road that seems to have a little more action.
but as it often is in life you start to think of something (a ride) and voila it falls into your lap, or in this case nearly runs you off the road. a couple of gentlement making a good clip around a corner, raising our hopes and our heartrates, are good enough to stop with a wave of the hand. and as with everyone we have met so far they are most gracious and gave us a ride in the back of their truck all the way into town
our driver
yes he is 10 yrs old,
yes he drives like a much older maniac,and yes his feet touch the peddalsand right to the bus station, beauty.
after sorting out our tickets for what turns out to be a pretty comfortable bus, we are on our way to Sewan Sherif and the mausolem of Hazart Shabaz Qalandar. Hazart, a sufi saint, philosopher and poet, preached tolerance between muslims and hindus and all kinds of other great concepts, as you would expect from someone who could be called a saint. he lived around 1200 AD and now his mausoleum attracts hundreds of thousands of devotees a year.
we get off the bus on the edge of town and we are at yet another series of roadside shacks in the middle of nowhere, blowing wind and dust, dark skies promising rain, and garbage whipping about with each gust. there aren't any tumbleweeds but it feels like there should be. so with looks on our faces like we haven't a clue where to go and producing the phrasebook to start working it out, someone askes if he could be of assistance. we gladly accept and sort out a ride into town.
arriving in the town square has it's postives and it's negatives. the positives are that there is no difficulty
main street
sewan sherif for the hotel owners/touts to find us, as it isn't immediately apparent where accommodation might be. the negative is it is a little like having steaks around our necks in a hungry part of the woods, lets just say there were not many visitors in town at the moment.
as you would expect in a place that attracts pilgrims, prayer mats are an essential feature of the hotel rooms for the five daily Muslim prayer sessions. windows, at least glassed window openings, seem quite out of reach for this hotel strip, so we look for somewhat-intact screens to at least minimize the all-too-familiar middle-of-the-night buzzing-mozzies-around-the-ears phenomenen.
we walk the strip with our entourage, seeing a few places and having various hotel managers insist that they would be honoured to have us as their guests (sometimes through a handy bystander/interpreter), we find something to our liking and settle in.
as it turns out the owner of the hotel we select claims to be a member of the Bhutto family. the Bhutto family is famous in pakistan, the current president is a bhutto, he was the husband of the late Benazir Bhutto, who was assasinated by militants a couple
of years ago. the Bhutto family comes from this area, the people are proud of it and their pictures are everywhere.
to be honest the maosoleum was not the highlight of Sewan Sherif for us. althought no one made us feel unwelcome, it was obvious the we are outsiders and as such our presence was more of a distraction and so we paid what respects we could and decided to explore the town.
as we wandered around the dusty streets, it became obvious very quickly that we were going to become tea sponges and we had better be able to suck it up. everwhere we walked: hello! how are you? come sit have a chai?! i have never had so much tea in my life. the thing is that you really don't want to say no. at times it is obvious that the people making the offers don't have much, but it doesn't seem to matter. they are doing their duty: show hospitality to guests, being gracious and welcoming... it's hard to refuse that, especially when it is genuine. and so it went; get as much in you as you can, and fortunately when we literally just could
not physically have anymore we could just say; "we have just had six cups! please, lets talk, but no tea" people seemed to understand and no feelings were hurt.
for a couple of days that's all we did, walk around and enjoy the interactions. near lunchtime one day a street vendor that has his restaurant on one of those wheel carts insisted that we have some lunch, "come sit, eat, you are guest, come sit!" it was free he insisted, and it was the best lunch we had had in that town. and of course, it was followed by tea.
as in many parts of the world, tea here is called
chai. the
chai typically served in much of India and this part of Pakistan is that heavily-sweetened black tea made with hot milk and some combination of cardamon, cinnimon, black pepper--exactly what we call chai at home.
perhaps one of the most amazing things was the fact that so many people that spoke no English whatsoever still wanted to interact with us, offer us tea, their desire to be hospitable by far overweighing the awkwardness of sitting there communicating via smiles alone. no matter!
another
day we walked around in the backstreets of the residential areas. meetting all kinds of people, drinking tea and taking pictures. one of the difficult things about this trip had been seeing laura essentially, at times, having to be a passenger here on the trip. even when some of the local women felt like they could communicate with us and laura would speak to them they would often defer and answer her question to me. it wasn't always that way, laura did have interactions with women and local people, but lets face it; it's a man's world over here and it has been difficult for a social, hands on, interacive person to sit back and accept that often all the interaction she may get is some creep staring at her (and certainly not a day passed without that). it's hard for a good western woman to be a good muslim woman at times.
but on this day it seemed it would be different. many local women would pop their heads out of their doors to see what all the commotion was about. and upon seeing the two of us they were very interested in making a connection with laura.
we, as often happens, gathered the attention of the children first. often they will walk far out of their way to come along with us, playing, joking and communicating whatever way we could. there were a couple of young ladies that took a real shine to laura.
by chance the direction of our walk took us by the house of these two girls at which point they insisted that we come in for a visit and meet the family. what a commotion! as it turns out there where about fifteen kids in this tiny multi-family unit, it was an explosion of excitement, like some one had just dropped a load of halloween candy down the throats of these kids, what a hoot. as they wanted laura to come inside it became uncertain that i would be able to join in. there was no adult male relative in the house at the time so it seemed i might have to sit this one out. that was just fine by me, a little bit of girl time was in order. but in the end they invited me in after they covered their heads and it was a bit of a party.
back streets
the woman in the bedsheet is modestly covered from head to ankle and sees out of a mesh in front of her eyes the young girls were thrilled to henna laura's hands, tell stories, make us tea and speak in halting English about their family and studies. there were two families living in this small house, grandparents included. and as it turned out one of matriarchs was a school teacher. all over the walls were posters showing girls at study, explaining the importance of education and how one can free oneself with knowledge. all the girls in the family were really switched on. it was a beautiful thing, one of our best days. after saying our goodbyes we left and had a real glow on.
that night we were having dinner in a resturant in the center of town, it was on the second storey and there was a view of the town square and mausoleum. so it was a nice place to have a meal and see all the goings on. as it turns out it is also a good place to go and be seen as well. just as we were about to order our dinners two gentlemen approach us. one of them, in a pretty nice suit, flashes me some kind of card and tells me to produce
hard working kids
kids giving you trouble? take them to pakistan to show them how it could be my passport and fill out our particulars and itinerary of our trip in pakistan. "ah pardon?" i say. he repeats his demand with no further explanation.
o.k. so i'm thinking; some guy, out of nowhere, approaches me for no apparent reason, flashes me some kind of card (that looks like it was made by a teenager) the way i would have done as a seventeen year old in a beer store with someone else's i.d. card. his thumb is covering all relevant information including the picture and it is in and out of his pocket so fast i'd have to be photo radar to get any of the info off of it. we have been told by every one under the sun to be careful and that apparently there are people around that may attempt to make our lives difficult in some way.
he tells us that he is with Pakistan intelligence but won't show me the card again or give me any other information... right. is this his limited English? what could james bond want with a couple of honkeys from the great white north? we had heard that around moenjodaro the police may give you an
escort while you are in the area, also in lahore we had met a couple who were made to wait for a vehicle police escort through much of Pakistan as they were travelling by motorbike. the police in all the stories we had heard were always plain clothed and out in the open. furthermore, we were not in that area any longer and did not have our own vehicle. so what gives Mr 007? i think you will need to do better than "give me all you personal information, tell me where you are staying and where you are going" thank you very much!
as this rapidly starts to become a scene some of the other diners start to inqure as to the problem. i explain that we are not inclined to just give out our personal information to anyone that comes along... especially international men of mystery. anyway as we start to get farther into it and he percives that we aren't budging and other people are getting involved he reluctantly shows us his i.d. again and seeing that that is not having the desired effect there is a change in his demeanor. it starts to become apparent
sewan town center
in that restaurant, we met a pakistan 007 that he is going to back down, but it was llike he was hurt. injured at the prospect that he was just trying to do his job and i guess ultimately looking out for our safety. demoralized he sheepishly gets up to leave having his authority rebuked with a look in his eyes that made me think; no one with ill intent would look that way, you ass, you have just crushed james bond and you didn't even have the decency to get out of your chair.
recalling that we have given this kind of info out in every hotel registar for the last three months and that really if some one really wanted to find us in this town it's not like it would be difficult, with a quick word between us (laura and i), and a mutual aknowlegement that we may have actually insulted him, we agree that in the interest of international relations we might as well do as he asks. so before he gets too far, it being my turn to be sheepish, i ask him to come back and we would be happy to co-operate. relieved he thanks us and we thank him and
our personal security force
me, robocop,Bhuto family member that was the end of that.
in the meantime, fellow diners, a family that had helped us, asked us to join them for dinner. still a little stunned we accept. after a few minutes and some general conversation they say that they think the guy was legitimate and it should be fine. as things settle down we order and shortly our food arrives.
i start to dig in and out of the corner of my eye i see several armed men walking straight at us, kilashnikovs and other automatic weapons hanging all over place. gee i wonder if my dinner is going to get cold? sure enough they are here for us. the good news is that they were all plain clothes officers and since we are old pros at this sort of thing we got through it pretty quickly. they told us that there would be an officer at our hotel to spend the night with us and with that most of them were off. a couple of guys stayed behind, we asked if they would like to join us for dinner, but it would seem that this the best way to get all the heavily armed
standard Pakistan greasy breaky
we soak up some of the grease with old phone book pages - they make ok napkins too men to leave our company.
sure enough there was an officer at our hotel, nice fellow. hard to imagine though what one guy with a hand gun could do to stop people that are determined to get us. at least he was happy enough to join us for a classic greasy Pakistani breakfast the next morning before we departed for Karachi.
the bus ride was unneventful. karachi is huge. not much to say about it really. formerly the nation's capital, it's a commercial centre and port city with few sights. it was our first time seeing the ocean in the three months since we left home which seemed significant somehow.
the only thing that was really on our minds at that point was that we were leaving far too soon, having seen too little and not the places of incredible beauty that we had heard so much about. in a place that basically has one price for everyone (instead of local price, tourist price), the people are as curious about you as you are about them. it left us with a feeling of starting something that was nowhere near finished.
if anyone from pakistan reads this:
cutie
sewan sherif we thank you, we hope that things will soon work out for your people and your country. such wonderful people deserve peace and prosperity. thank you pakistan. we hope to return.
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Dr Kamal Qureshi
non-member comment
Heart of Gold
Dear Fellas, Thank you very much for such a beautifully honest account of a beautifully honest country. People of Pakistan have a heart of Gold. They are unarguably one of the most hospitable and friendly nation in the world. What you hear in the media is hyped and largely political. The troubled parts of the country are about 10% of its total geography and entail about 3% of its population. Undoubtedly there is extremism which comes from a deep sense of injustice in many spheres. But there is also hope as in recent elections i.e. October, 2008, the extremist forces were wholesomely defeated even in these troubled areas. There is a lot of hope that the country will get back on track and will be an amicable tourist haven again. Articles such as this one are much needed to bring out the existing positives also, which otherwise do not get much attention in popular press.